I find that I postpone all actual intercourse with my friends to a certain real intercourse which takes place commonly when we are actually at a dist… - Henry David Thoreau

What do ye want to hear, ye puling infants? A trumpet-sound that would train you up to mankind, or a nurse's lullaby? The preachers and the lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

What animal is more clumsy than the tortoise? If it wishes to get into the brook, it crawls to its edge and then tumbles, lets itself fall, turning a somerset, perhaps, from the bank to the water, —resigns itself to mere gravity, drawing in its head and members.

It matters not where or how far you travel, —the farther commonly the worse, —but how much alive you are.